Driving MORE Sales
by Patricia Watkins and Dan Doster
Patricia Watkins and Dan Doster bring to life the art and science of sales through real-world examples and practical wisdom in this useful guide for transforming sales teams into winning organizations.
DESCRIPTION
Driving MORE Sales is targeted at first-time CEOs and sales executives in the tech industry. Industry veterans Patricia Watkins and Dan Doster bring to life the art and science of sales through real-world examples and practical wisdom in this useful guide for transforming sales teams into winning organizations. Detailed and comprehensive, yet entertaining and easy-to-read, Watkins and Doster’s book provides guidance on what you need to know to drive MORE sales.
“2015 Top Sales Priorities based on a survey of nearly 4,000 respondents – #1 Closing more deals, #2 Improving the efficiency of the Sales Funnel, #3 Reducing the length of the sales cycle”*
Driving M.O.R.E. Sales focuses on several areas including:
Know your
Markets
Messaging
Metrics
Build Solid
Operations
Optimized Processes
Outcomes
Provide
Resellers and Channel Partners
Rewards & Recognition
Retention & Referrals
Ensure
Enablement
Essential Sales Tools
Execution
““Sales force compensation represents the single largest marketing investment for most B2B companies.” **
Patricia has extensive experience as an SVP and VP of Sales, regionally, nationally and globally in both startups in Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 companies including HP, AT&T, Teradata, and NCR. She earned her BBA from The University of Texas at Austin and her MBA from Santa Clara University. Patricia has built and led sales organizations from startups to over $800M in annual sales, transformed several sales teams from worst to first, and led many successful teams to significantly improved results.
Patricia has extensive experience as an SVP and VP of Sales, regionally, nationally and globally in both startups in Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 companies including HP, AT&T, Teradata, and NCR. She earned her BBA from The University of Texas at Austin and her MBA from Santa Clara University. Patricia has built and led sales organizations from startups to over $800M in annual sales, transformed several sales teams from worst to first, and led many successful teams to significantly improved results.
Dan is a consultant, entrepreneur, and author with extensive experience in pricing, marketing, sales, and corporate strategy. After completing degrees from Wabash College, Yale University, and University of Notre Dame, Dan served at McKinsey & Company, Inc. and later worked in executive roles such as Marketing SVP, COO, CFO, and CEO in a variety of industries and companies including GE Capital.
EXCERPT
Sales has evolved rapidly with the advent of the Internet, digital tools, social media, and mobile marketing. But these advancements have more often reinforced the basics, rather than replaced them.
We have experience in driving sales across many industries and companies. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, we’ve harnessed best practices, including the latest digital tools across sales, marketing, alliances, and channels. In serving as CEOs, COOs, and vice presidents of sales and marketing, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t in the Internet age. We both love challenges and significantly creating or changing the landscape to drive positive outcomes. We both have a passion for finding ways to substantially increase sales, and we both have solid track records of results.
Over time, we’ve developed a sales framework that we’ve used successfully no matter where we’ve been and no matter the size of the challenges demanded. Our framework is designed to drive more sales. We call it the “MORE Sales Framework.” The MORE Sales Framework links the 12 elements in the MORE diagram below.
Market
Let’s start with the “M” in MORE: A clearly defined market is the first step towards successfully orienting the sales process. The selected market must identify a customer segment that needs—and can utilize—the product or service you offer. That’s where leveraging your competitive advantages provides the greatest impact and earnings potential.
Messaging
Without a succinct message to communicate your offering, and its value, how will prospects know what problem it solves? A compelling message can be driven across all of your market’s meaningful channels, not just traditional methods like websites, print, and media advertising. Digital marketing, mobile, and social media should be harnessed as well.
Metrics
Every company collects data. But too few define, capture, and collect data that’s useful in driving the desired behaviors. How else can management track the success of its practices without regular meaningful metrics to confirm course and speed?
Operations
The “O” in the MORE Sales Framework starts with operations. To make salespeople more effective, keep them selling. Offload to others the critical but burdensome administrative and logistical tasks from credit checks to revenue recognition and contracts, to placing and tracking orders, to preparing and maintaining reports and dashboards.
Optimized Sales Processes
It’s equally important to optimize sales processes. Otherwise, you’ll bog down your sales resources and reduce their productivity. Optimized sales processes increase sales velocity and shorten sales cycles.
Outcomes
The ultimate objective is achieving positive outcomes for your customers. Focusing on what the customer hopes to achieve closes more sales and sets the stage for glowing referrals.
Resellers/Channel Partners
The “R” element of the MORE Sales Framework starts with resellers and channel partners. Both are sales force multipliers. Partners expand your sales capability with additional feet-on-the-street and increased market exposure. The best partners bring trusted relationships with prospective customers, thus accelerating the sales cycle.
Retention and Referrals
Customer retention results from delighted customers. Happy customers provide upsell and cross-sell opportunities—plus strong referrals.
Rewards and Recognition
Alignment of all members of the sales team, from senior management to director to manager to salesperson, is vital to ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Rewarding productive behaviors at all levels helps accomplish this.
Enablement
Enablement leads the “E” portion of the MORE Sales Framework. Training your salespeople to understand your offerings is critical. They need a thorough understanding of your messaging, your solution, and how your solution solves problems, how it delivers outcomes, and what makes you different from the competition.
Essential Sales Tools
One-time training events are easily forgotten. Essential sales tools provide repetition that will solidify your salespeople’s knowledge and skills, allowing them to deliver your message confidently and completely. Consistent messages must also permeate your website, digital marketing, mobile messaging, and social media. In addition, there is an abundance of software selling tools and plugins to help make sales more efficient, consistent, and predictable.
Execution
Finally, the most important (though often overlooked) element for achieving MORE sales is execution. Execution means carrying out the plan, optimizing the processes, reaching the objectives, implementing the metrics, and constantly ensuring that your company creates delightful outcomes. A brilliant plan that isn’t executed isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.